Trust in thrust and thrust I must! - Let's Play Kerbal Space Program

[Azza Bamboo]

Kerbal Space Program 1.10 stock (no mods)

Format: screenshot LP right here in this thread.



Kerbal Space Program is a game set in the fictional Kerbol solar system. In this world, you play as little green men called Kerbals. You build, launch and pilot rockets and other aerospace machines from their home planet of Kerbin, eventually reaching deeper into space and the other bodies of their solar system. As you explore this world and its neighboring worlds, you can earn science points, renown and money which can be used to research better parts and build better facilities for your space program.



The real challenge of the game is its simulated orbital mechanics, but the real joy of the game is in the crazy stories that can be told through its brave little aliens.

CONTENTS

Introduction

0: What is the Point? - We vote on exactly what our goals are for this playthrough.

1: The Facilities - An overview of the buildings at our new Kerbal Space Center.

2: Building a Rocket - We learn what parts we have available to build our first rocket.

Act 1: A New Space Programme

3: Staging an Upset - We use some cunning to build our first rocket, one that exceeds all expectations and puts us in the history books.

4: Sailing Past Our Goals Part 1 and 2 - Utilising new research, our second rocket launch shows a rapid progression in our capabilities. We become first to orbit Kerbin. We're not done yet, though.

5: Sailing Past Our Goals Part 3 - Our second rocket leaves Kerbin Orbit and heads past the Mun.

6: Flight of the Pippin 1 - Our third launch is a giant leap for Kerbinkind.

Act 2: Kerbin's Moons

7: Rendezvous with Drama Part 1 and 2 - Two ships meet in Kerbin orbit, providing the knowledge we need to finish conquering space near Kerbin.

8: The Atmosphere on Kerbin - We refuse to leave a kerbal stranded in orbit, but would we leave them stranded on Kerbin?

9: Patience Part 1 and 2 - We learn the lessons needed to plan our escape from Kerbin's gravity.

10: At Our Heels - Our commissioners give us much to do with our Munfaring capabilities, as our opponents seem to be catching up with us. Val heads out on a mission encompassing many objectives.

11: On Fumes - Our attempts at flying missions with multiple objectives begin to stretch our fuel budgets. Val and Jeb fly concurrent missions which both encounter fuel issues.

12: A Big Pond - Val and Bob set off on the first interplanetary mission.

Act 3: Escaping Kerbin's Gravity

13: Cursed Space Number - New pilot Tim Kerman carries out some amazing feats of flying on his debut mission, but our pilots have a stroke of bad luck.

14: Saving Pilot Kerman - Jeb's predicament sees Tim flying our most distant rescue mission yet, and we finally learn how to sample the ground.

15: 5 Birds 1 Stone - Jeb flies another busy mission, and kicks back while someone else does the work.

16: Odds and Ends - Tim heads out to new worlds while Jeb makes new friends.

17: No Limits - Another busy mission for Jeb earns us the funding needed to launch our biggest ship yet.

18: The Long Wait - We launch two interplanetary rockets and test out new technologies.

19: Just Gonna Send It - We launch larger ships which are headed deeper into space, and gain an ambitious side mission to Gilly along the way.

20: Design Limits - We stretch the Littlefish design as far as it can go, and ask what is needed to go further.

21: Departure for Laythe - Trido and Laoly park our latest design in Kerbin's orbit.

22: Return Flight - The Ambition sets off for Laythe as we make steps toward our ambitious Gilly base. Macul and Jeb take a shortcut home in order to meet Macul's departure time for a vital Jool mission.

23: God Closes the Windows - The planets fall out of alignment, making this a bad time to head out on interplanetary missions. We take stock of the flights currently in progress, and new pilot Venbrett brings our Minmus base closer to completion.

[Azza Bamboo]

What is the purpose of this game? It's a game I like to give a purpose to every time I create a new career. I'll now ask the thread to define our purpose by asking who runs this space program, and what purpose do they give it?

Here's our three candidates:



Bronslo Kerman

"What we've got is an exciting opportunity to revolutionise space flight with new innovation and free enterprise"

Bronslo can often be found on stage at a fancy press release, talking big about his ambitions in the hope of drumming up capital. Bronslo has an existing airline company, and wants to expand into commercial space travel. His ideas, however, are far from traditional rocketry. He wants to carry out research into more efficient methods of space travel, including plane launched rockets and reusable rocket stages.

Bronslo's Facilities

Bronslo would start the game with a once upgraded runway and with Aviation already researched.

Bronslo's Philosophy/Play Style

Bronslo is looking to make the maximum money from the minimum expense, and will always be looking to minimise the cost of each space flight. He will prioritise space tourism contracts above all else, and will drive research toward cost saving measures such as improved aviation abilities.

Bronslo's End Goal

This career save would end when Bronslo has earned one billion kerbal credits.

Other Goals

- A replica stratolaunch style flight
- A rocket that lands its first stage



Nataliy Kerman

"We will be first"

Nataliy was installed as head of space exploration after the glorious revolution. She has assured the motherland that we will be first! First to the mun, first to minmus, first to explore the far reaches of the system. She has an aggressive approach, one of "getting it done with what we have". She wants to press ahead with exploration of space, researching only what is necessary to achieve the next milestone.

Nataliy's Facilities

Nataliy would start the game with a once upgraded rocket launchpad.

Nataliy's Philosophy/Play Style

Nataliy is trying to rack up milestones such as being first into orbit, or first on the mun, or first back from Tylo! Nataliy will seek to do this with minimal research into new components. She will prioritise milestone contracts and flag planting contracts above all else and will drive research in the direction of making bigger rockets.

Nataliy's End Goal

This career save would end once the space program has returned a surface sample from each body in the solar system, and has fired a ship containing its political enemies into the sun.

Other Goals

- An homage to the R-7 family rockets
- An homage to the Venera space probes



Mark Kerman

"All systems nominal, begin final go/no-go call"

Mark has been appointed the chief of the newly formed Space Exploration Agency, and now has the difficult task of providing a state level of reassurance over a project that is as risky as space travel. He has a reserved approach, one of "getting it right" and "prioritising the safety of crew members."

Mark's Facilities

Mark will not be able to quicksave or revert his flights, requiring extensive testing prior to committing kerbal lives to a space flight.

Mark's Philosophy/Play Style

First and foremost we have to get this right, and that means test test test. Each rocket will be tested before we risk kerbal lives. Secondly, space is about discovery and getting the science done. Mark will prioritise contracts that test new rocket parts above all else, and will prioritise research into new scientific instruments. He will rack up milestones very cautiously.

Mark's End Goal

Mark's career would end when all technologies have been researched.

Other Goals

An Apollo style mun landing

[Azza Bamboo]

Vote for which leader you'd like to run this space program.

VOTING ENDS 8AM GMT ON SATURDAY 18th

[Carbon dioxide]

Nataliy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U06jlgpMtQs

[hopeandjoy]

Nataliy, for the motherland and those sweet, sweet firsts.

[Wakkerdis]

Natiliy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_lYyA-YLA0

[Azza Bamboo]

9 hours left on voting! I'm going to bed and I'll see who has won tomorrow.

[Tanegashima]

Just to be contrary, Bronslo.

[Azza Bamboo]

We are proud to announce that the first Kerbal Space Program has been founded in conjunction with the newly assembled Aerospace Workers Council. Its leader, Nataliy Kerman, has been appointed with the task of winning the space race.

To set up a new career save in this game, you start by selecting from a raft of difficulty settings.





Pictured: the full settings, for those who play this game and wanted to see how I had set it up.

In plain English:

• I can savescum.
• Enough money to get the launch pad upgraded once with 26,000 kerbucks left over.
• If I somehow crash despite the ability to savescum, my crews will die permanently.
• All the penalties and rewards are set to the scale used in the game's "Hard" setting. (This determines how readily the game will throw money, science and reputation at me)
• Probes/Robots will require a radio link for anyone to be able to control them.
• Radio links will be disrupted by plasma caused by rapid re entry.
• Parts can be destroyed by excessive heat, pressure and G forces (as well as collisions).
• Kerbals can blackout due to excessive G forces (which may cause them to lose control of the vessel, or may cause space tourists to refuse to pay their fares).

[Azza Bamboo]

1: THE FACILITIES



Here we are, the Kerbal Space Center. Let's have a basic look at the facilities here.

Runway

This is for launching and landing planes horizontally. Nataliy probably won't be doing a lot of that.

Hangar

This is for building planes. We probably won't be doing a lot of that, but the hangar and runway are also good places to build and test rovers.

Control Room

This is the place we choose, plan and oversee our missions from. I'll show more of this later when it gets interesting, but at the moment our only mission choices are very basic milestones such as "launch a vessel".

Launch Pad

This is where we launch our rockets.

Tracking Station

This is where we can follow all of the objects in the solar system in one handy map.



The view can show areas as wide as the whole solar system, or as tight as a part of the surface of one planet. The map is rather empty right now, but soon it will be filled.

Barracks

Here our crews train and are outfitted with their space suits. At the moment we only have suits capable of surviving within a pressurized capsule, but we can later upgrade the barracks to get a suit for space walks.



We have two pilots, Jebediah and Valentina. Pilots are adept at controlling our vessels in flight, and can stabilise a spaceship while it is flying. Flying without the stability assistance of a pilot is tricky in this game, especially in outer space where there is no air resistance to slow our every roll.

We also have a scientist and an engineer. These are workers who will maintain the apparatus aboard future spacecraft, but for now we are pioneering spaceflight with our pilots.

Admin Building



Here various apparatchiks deliberate over the strategy of the space program. From this menu we can employ various organisational strategies that offer different bonuses at different costs. For example, Appreciation Campaign generates reputation at the cost of money. I have highlighted the strategy that most suits Nataliy's style: one that boosts all rewards on milestone missions at the expense of rewards on other missions. We can't employ this strategy just yet as it requires a lot of science, money and reputation.

Assembly Building

This is where we build rockets. I'll show the interior of this in the next post.

Research and Development

Here we research new components to use on our spacecraft.



You've probably seen this kind of thing before: a technology tree with various dependencies. To advance technology in this game, we need to collect science points during our exploration of this solar system. We then spend these points on new technology upgrades. Each upgrade allows us to pay the development cost of the newly researched component. Once that cost is spent, we can use the new part on our vessels.

[Azza Bamboo]

2: BUILDING A ROCKET



Here is every part we currently have available.

From left to right

"Onion" Pod

The Onion Pod seats 1 crew member. It is coated with an ablative substance (a substance that burns up in the atmosphere deliberately in order to shed heat and prevent the entire craft from burning up). The Onion pod also has an inbuilt means of separating from a rocket it is attached to, as demonstrated by this simple rocket I made in a separate sandbox save.



For reference, here is Earth's own Vostok 1 entry vehicle, which carried Yuri Gagarin into space and back again.



"Mk1" Pod

The Mk1 Pod seats 1 crew member. It has no ablator coating, nor does it have an inbuilt decoupling mechanism like the Onion. What it does have, however, is a reaction wheel mechanism. This is a series of spinning disks on gimbals that can be turned to impart a torque on the ship due to conservation of angular momentum. In other words, this pod can turn itself around even in outer space.



For reference, here is an example of Earth's own Mercury capsule, which carried Gus Grissom to space and back again.



Solid Rocket Booster

The solid rocket booster burns solid fuel to generate thrust. Like a firework, this particular example has no means of stopping the rocket once it has ignited, nor of adjusting the power output or direction of thrust of this rocket booster. This rocket will ignite and keep going at its current rate until all the fuel is spent.

Parachute

This stops our pods from hitting the ground too hard.

Basic Fin

This can be strapped to a rocket to provide it some aerodynamic stabilisation while in the atmosphere.

Mystery Goo Science Experiment

We have been given a strange scientific experiment to carry out while in space. This can be used to generate science points and earn new parts.

Box Strut

If we want to make abominations like this thing I made on a sandbox save, you use a box strut.

[Azza Bamboo]

3: STAGING AN UPSET



The sensible thing would be to make a nice, safe rocket as pictured above. This could get you up to 8km and do some scientific experiments along the way.

However, we need to be first into space, and this won't get anywhere near.

If you want to travel up to 8km, take a plane. Don't waste our Space Program's time with this stratospheric design.

To achieve our high goals, it might be tempting to strap more solid rocket boosters onto our rocket to get it higher up, like so



and then to strap more boosters onto those boosters and so on until we create an utter mess that can breach the edge of space.

That approach has diminishing returns, and our hangar can only assemble 30 parts before our workers put their tools down and strike, demanding no more parts than 30.

28 solid boosters, a pod and a parachute wouldn't work. It'd be too unstable to fly with an onion pod and there'd be no way of separating a Mk1 pod from the mass of rockets, which would weigh far too much for a safe landing with a single parachute. You could try eating into the rocket booster budget with more parachutes, but it's a balance that simply doesn't work.

There is, however, one thing we can do with these parts.



If you place a solid rocket booster directly on top of another solid rocket booster: firing the upper booster causes the lower booster to be caught in its jet. At that point the lower booster will begin to overheat and will then explode. In other words, we can fire some rockets then be rid of them when they are spent.

Very soon we can research a technology that will make this destructive use of rocket fuel unnecessary.

Each booster only outputs a certain amount of thrust. Past a certain number of boosters, the rocket is too heavy to be lifted by one booster, so the lower portion of the rocket consists of larger groups that are fired simultaneously to overcome the mass it is lifting.

STAGING AN UPSET - PART 2: LAUNCH

Jebediah Kerman has boarded the Sergei 1, and begins our pioneering voyage into space.



Separation of the lowest stage by means of detonating the lower rocket booster.



Separation of another stage, showing its two side rocket boosters falling free of the detonated center rocket booster.



The view from the capsule, with the altimeter showing an altitude above 70km, the edge of Kerbin's atmosphere



We carry out the government mandated science - once in space, once in the high atmosphere, once in the lower atmosphere.



The trajectory we have chosen is actually quite dangerous. The gradient of its slope through the atmosphere on re entry is very steep. This presents danger, because the steeper you enter the atmosphere, the less of it you travel through before hitting the deadly water or land at the bottom of that atmosphere. When travelling at the speeds caused by descending from a spaceflight, you want to give yourself a little bit of atmosphere to slow down inside of. This angle is actually too steep.



So, on re entry, we start our last engine to slow down our descent. Without this, the rocket would collide with the ground at about 1km/s, after having torn its parachute from its ropes in a desperate attempt to slow down.



Thankfully, as the rocket fired successfully, Jebediah lands safely back in Kerbin's waters...

...



having collected a buttload of science



What's more, the commissioners are pleased, and have allocated more funds to the program.



and, most importantly, Jebediah has returned to the motherland to a hero's welcome.

Today is a momentous day for all Kerbalkind. We have taken our first brave step toward exploration of other worlds. I am hopeful that one day the great ocean that is space can be a place of work and life. It is our workers that give me this hope: everyone who has worked for this nation rides with our pilots on these missions. It is our labour as one people that will one day deliver us to the stars.

[Azza Bamboo]

4: SAILING PAST OUR GOALS

There is no time to let off the pressure. Now Jebediah has taken the prize of the first Kerbal in space, we must continue to show our dominance. As the capitalist world spins in endless cycles, we must break free of its bonds.

In the control room, our commissioners challenge us to make true on our word. They give us a 10,000 kerbuck grant to build a machine that will park itself in an orbit around Kerbin.



They also want us to test a new engine our nation has developed.



With the science earned from Jebediah's pioneering flight, we research a few new technologies.



These are the components we choose to develop at this stage. From left to right:

Fuel Tank

Contains tanks for liquid fuel and oxidiser in order to supply liquid fuel rockets.

"Swivel" Liquid Fuel Rocket

The liquid fuel rocket consumes fuel from fuel tanks in order to provide thrust. Unlike the solid rocket boosters used in our last flight, the liquid fuel rocket can be activated, de activated, and throttled up or down throughout the flight. This makes it much more manageable than the solid rocket boosters used before. It owes its name to its final useful trick: gimballing. This rocket engine can pivot its bell nozzle to direct its thrust, allowing for greater control of the rocket.

Solid Fuel Rockets

These two solid fuel rockets function as the ones we used in the last mission. However, these are larger. They provide more thrust and carry more fuel.

Decoupler

This is an explosive ring that can be used to tear a rocket in half. We now use these instead of detonating our rocket stages in the jet of the next engine in the stack.

Thermometer

This is another science experiment. It's not very interesting to use in space, as there's no air to carry any heat.



At our barracks, we use our grant money to develop better facilities and research a suit capable of surviving a spacewalk.



More importantly, the renovated facility has a taller flagpole.



Our new technology and crew facilities have culminated in this: The Horsfield 1

It uses the onion module instead of the mk1 module for two reasons:

1. The new gimballing rocket engines provide some degree of steering, meaning the Mk1's reaction wheels are much less important here than they were in the last mission.

2. The re-entry speeds from orbit are much faster than the speeds from the last mission's sub-orbital arc. The ablative substance on the onion pod could well be the difference between life and death.

One thing to note about the Horsfield is that we don't yet have decouplers capable of strapping rockets to the side of our ship like this...



At the moment we only have ring decouplers capable of severing a rocket like this...



to overcome the challenge of strapping two solid rocket boosters either side of the central tank as we have done here, we've placed additional fuel tanks on the side of the main fuel tanks with ring decouplers attaching the solid rocket boosters to them.



In addition to those ring decouplers, there is a third decoupler that will separate the lower fuel tanks from the upper fuel tanks, creating a final upper stage.

The reason for choosing a configuration with two SRBs straddling the liquid fuel tank is the ability to fire the SRBs while the liquid fuel engine burns at a slow rate. This gives us all the thrust and fuel of the large SRBs but with the stability that comes from the swivel rocket's pivoting bell nozzle.

[Azza Bamboo]

SAILING PAST OUR GOALS PART 2 - THE LAUNCH

Having spent all of our money on refurbishing the barracks and building this rocket, this mission is do or die for the space program.



Brave pilot Valentina Kerman takes off from our Launchpad.



Separation of the solid rocket boosters goes less well than planned as they strike they rocket, destroying one of its fins.



The final rocket stage separates in Kerbin's upper atmosphere.



As we deactivate our rocket engine and coast toward the peak of our ascent, the rocket tumbles. This is due to a lack of reaction wheels on this rocket. This does not threaten the mission, as we'll stabilise the moment we fire the rockets again, but it's certainly uncomfortable for the pilot.



Exiting the atmosphere, we complete the test of the liquid fuel rocket, earning 20,000 kerbucks from our commissioners.



Nearing the peak of our ascent, Valentina fires the rocket's thrusters...



...Parking us in a stable orbit of Kerbin.

From this position, Nataliy presses mission control to calculate the ship's remaining delta V. She has greater ambitions for the Horsfield 1.

With the numbers confirmed, the order is sent out to Valentina.





All going well, Valentina will fly by the mun in one and a half days time. It's hard to say, though, because our tracking facilities and mission control are yet unable to predict encounters. Our current trajectory amounts to eyeballing it.

[Azza Bamboo]

Sidenote - Two Horsfields and a Bunch of Houseflies



September 15th 1968: this vessel, the Zond 5, was launched by the USSR. On board were two unnamed Horsfield Tortoises, a house plant and dozens of eggs that would soon develop into houseflies. This vehicle was first parked in Earth orbit, before being flown out on a 6 day trajectory that would bring it within 2,000 kilometers of our moon. Once it had flown past the moon, the rocket was brought back to Earth.



The Zond 5 capsule was recovered, and the specimens aboard had survived, except for many of the houseflies who had reached the end of their natural life cycle by this point. These creatures were unfortunately never intended to have the Hero's welcome they deserved. In a laboratory on Earth, a control vivarium containing another set of tortoises, flies and a houseplant were kept. All of these specimens were dissected to investigate any differences between the control specimens and those which had returned from the spaceflight.



So long, space safety tortoises. You beat Apollo 8's three humans to a moon flyby by almost 3 months.

[Wakkerdis]

Are we only doing the minimum necessary science that we can, or will we need to do more to advance our technology?

I'm impressed that you can actually get to a mun flyby that easily. I've been playing for a while, mostly learning by trial and error. I've probably done twenty missions or more and only now am I managing to design something that might have a shot at an orbit that high and come back safely.

[Azza Bamboo]

We're going beyond the theoretical minimum science needed, if only because I've seen another player get to Duna and back using only the starting equipment and fully upgraded assembly buildings and launch pads.

Instead I'm going to research up to the point where we have the terrier engine, and then see how far I get without ever touching the tech tree again.

Even though we're not doing much research, we do have to upgrade the research facility once because that unlocks picking up surface samples.

[Azza Bamboo]

5: SAILING PAST OUR GOALS - PART3



A day and a half later, we're on a course that is deflected by the Mun's gravity. With only 70 m/s delta V remaining, and a lack of means to calculate our trajectory in advance, this poses a question.

If we're just eyeballing our trajectory, how do we know that we're not about to have the Mun slingshot us irrecoverably far away from Kerbin?

The answer is somewhere between "it'll be fine" and an educated guess...



Let's say we're a happy little rocket in an elliptical orbit around this planet. We're moving counterclockwise around this orbit as indicated by the... triangles.



If we flip our rocket over and apply thrust against our direction of travel, our orbit on the opposite side of the orbital ellipse will move closer to the planet we're orbiting, changing our path to that of the dotted line.



Now, we were in a counterclockwise orbit around Kerbin before the game started showing our movement relative to the mun instead of relative to Kerbin.



However, if you look at our movement relative to the mun, you'll see that we joined the Mun on its west side and it'll throw us out on its East side. This is a direction that's relatively facing away from our original counterclockwise direction of travel. In other words, the moon is applying its slingshot in a way that will bring us closer to Kerbin.



In the meantime, Valentina becomes the first Kerbal to carry out a spacewalk, and she does so while becoming the first ever kerbal to fly by the Mun.

Today brings hope to all kerbalkind. Today we have traveled close to the distant shores of a new world, and have caught sight of its coves and oases. Now we must move to set foot on these new worlds, and that begins with today's experiment into a suit that can sustain its wearer in outer space for a time.

Some hours later, mission control recalculates our vector relative to Kerbin. The result of our Mun encounter is that we are indeed headed closer to Kerbin than we were before.

As mentioned earlier, steep entries into Kerbin's atmosphere present a severe health risk, and this is one steep profile.



Attempts to correct our trajectory make little progress before the rocket's fuel burns out.



Fearing we may not be travelling through enough of the atmosphere to slow our descent in time, Valentina agrees to keep her pod attached to the rocket on re entry. This is to make use of the additional drag it provides.



As the rocket begins to whittle away in the plasma storm, the intense G forces become too much for Valentina. She falls unconscious.



What's left of the rocket slows to a safe speed at roughly 15 km in the air, but Valentina remains unconscious.



at about 8000m Valentina regains consciousness, separating our pod and deploying its parachute.



She lands safely in the desert.



EVA (Extra-Vehicular Activity) reports offer a generous amount of science.



The commissioners are pleased. Our funds are healthy again, although we only recover 800 kerbucks worth of material from the landed pod.



Valentina returns to a Hero's welcome, and has learned much from her 3 day long voyage in space. She has advanced to level 1. This gives her a greater tolerance to G forces. She also gains the ability to point a ship in the direction of its travel, or opposite to its direction of travel, independently. The latter is very useful for landings.



With the science earned from this mission, we complete what could be our final research project for a long time.



Three new parts, from left to right:

Fuel Tank

A bigger fuel tank, equivalent to two of the fuel tanks we were using previously. Given that our assembly building only allows 30 parts to be combined at the moment, having a bigger fuel tank can be useful.

"Thud" Liquid Fuel Engine

This engine is designed to be mounted on the side of a fuel tank as opposed to being placed underneath it. In terms of its performance, it's more efficient for its thrust in the atmosphere than the swivel engine, but less efficient for its thrust in a vacuum. It has less thrust overall than the swivel engine, but this engine is almost never used on its own. A pair of these always provides more thrust than one swivel. Like the Swivel, the Thud can gimbal.

"Terrier" Liquid Fuel Engine

This engine has terrible performance inside of an atmosphere, and has little more than a quarter of the Swivel's thrust. In the vacuum of space, though, this engine has fantastic efficiency. There are only three engines in the whole game which are more efficient in a vacuum than the terrier, and two of those are at endpoints in the tech tree. Like the Swivel and Thud, the Terrier can gimbal.

[Azza Bamboo]

6: Flight of the Pippin 1



We're still flying high from Valentina's mission, in which we became first to fly by the Mun and first to carry out a spacewalk. Now we press on to the next milestone.



This is the Pippin 1, a new spacecraft model designed to carry us to Kerbin's second moon: Minmus.



Here we see its three stages. From left to right:

First stage

A solid rocket booster. This has no gimballing. As the ship is controlled by an onion command module, there is no reaction wheel and thus no means of directing the rocket while this stage carries it. Hopefully it stays relatively upright.

Second stage

A well supplied swivel rocket stabilised by fins. If the first stage drifts slightly out of alignment, we should be able to fix our course with the gimballing and aerodynamic properties of this stage. This stage should carry us into a suborbital trajectory.

Upper Stage

Once the second stage has carried us above most of the atmosphere, this highly efficient vacuum optimised engine will kick in. This stage will throw us into Kerbin's orbit, then deliver us to minmus and back.



View from near the control room as Jebediah heads into space.



Separation of the first stage. This shows the wider plume of the solid rocket booster ending at the start of the thinner plume of the liquid fuel engine. The thinner plume shows a swerve where the gimballing engine has started to correct the ship's course.



Separation of the second stage at roughly 25km up. Now we're above the densest parts of the atmosphere, the efficiency of the terrier engine can be exploited.



Our trans-minmus injection burn viewed from Kerbin's orbit.



This trajectory overshoots Minmus slightly, to keep us near to its orbital path for longer.



If we view this trajectory from the side, we can see there's a height gap between our trajectory and that of Minmus.



three days later, at the halfway point to Minmus on our long trajectory, the Mun and Kerbin are in view as we burn parallel to Kerbin's South pole to bring our trajectory down toward Minmus'



The burn was overshot slightly. Eyeballing encounters like this is never an exact science.



We encounter minmus.



We perform a burn to carry us into orbit.



We then perform another burn at the far side of Minmus, to bring our orbit close.



Finally, on the light side of Minmus, we burn to descend toward its surface.



Minmus' puny gravity is 20 times weaker than Kerbin's at its surface. It takes only a tiny amount of thrust to slow this fall.

A worker of the glorious LPB has set foot on a new world, blazing the trail for all kerbalkind. We hope for hero Jebediah's safe return, and for this to be the first of many landings to come.

We need an upgraded research facility to be able to take a sample from Minmus' surface. However, sampling this green sandstone deposit requires no such advanced laboratories. Good job on Jeb for bringing that pick with him.



Jeb shoves his rocket until it faces East. In Minmus' weak gravity, this is an easy feat.



Jeb then fires its engines, gimballing them enough to lever the vessel off the ground.



Our sub orbital trajectory fires us lower than the cliffs alongside us.



Kerbin appears over the horizon as we sail within 300m of Minmus' surface, casting a shadow that is visible in the bottom right of the picture.



Expending the last of our fuel, we overshoot our Kerbin re entry again.



Another blackout inducing re-entry has the region's workers' council discussing the need for improvements.



Nonetheless Jeb lands safely in the desert. This is Kerbin's only desert, and is thus the same desert we landed in last time.



Surface samples are a motherload for the motherland.



Our funds look incredibly healthy again.



This specialised landing brings Jebediah up to level 2. This vastly improves his G force tolerances, and gives him not only the level 1 navigation options, but the additional options to independently steer in four important directions perpendicular to his direction of travel. These four directions are as follows.



1: Radial Out

Imagine we drew a line out from the center of the planet we're orbiting out to the ship. Ie, a radius. Radial out points us outward from the planet while aligned with its radius.

2: Radial In

Radial in points us inward to the planet while aligned with its radius.

Thrusting radial in or radial out slowly pivots our entire orbital circle or ellipse about the ship. It's like if we were to hold a frisbee by its outer edge, as you would when you're about to throw it, only instead of throwing it you just pivot it along its plane by your wrist like you would just before releasing it in a throw. The whole orbital disc pivots about the ship very slowly. In effect, radial out brings the part of the orbit that is ahead of you further away from the planet, and radial in brings it closer. I'd encourage anyone who isn't sure about how these nodes work to take a trip to Minmus' orbit and see for yourself. Minmus has such weak gravity that even the tiniest thrust has a huge impact on its orbital trajectory. As such, it's a great place to experiment with concepts like these directions or how to rendezvous, because each adjustment is very cheap to make in terms of fuel.

3 and 4 Normal and anti normal

Normal fires you perpendicular to your direction of travel in a direction that would pivot the plane of your orbit. It might be easier at first to think of this as pointing up or down relative to your orbital plane, but remember: if you're on a slanted orbit, you're not pointing up relative to the planet, you're pointing perpendicular to the plane of your orbit.

Burning Normal or Anti Normal can get confusing.

Burning Normal will pivot your orbital plane counterclockwise about the radius line drawn from the center of the planet to your ship. Anti Normal will pivot the orbit clockwise. Our burn to bring our trajectory down to Minmus' was a manual anti normal burn.

[Carbon dioxide]

Do you have pictures of what orbits look like before and after those specific burns you described at the end? Maybe that would help me understand them better.

[Azza Bamboo]

Do you have pictures of what orbits look like before and after those specific burns you described at the end? Maybe that would help me understand them better.

Sure thing!

SIDENOTE 2 - PERPENDICULAR BURNS

I've cracked open a sandbox save to get some images of these burns. The #1 rule defining all of the following directional burns is that they are pointed perpendicular to your direction of travel relative to the body you're orbiting. The Game's maneuver node widget illustrates this clearly, ignoring the green symbols.



As you can see, our direction of travel flows through the center of the manever node circle, and the nodes point out perpendicular to that direction of travel.

The following orbit is the "Before" position for all of the burns in this post.



We've got a ship in this orbit, which I've made somewhat mid distance away from Kerbin just to make it easy to see. This view is looking straight down on Kerbin's North pole, and we're orbiting counterclockwise in this view.



Looking straight down on the Equator from roughly above the KSC, you see that the plane of this orbit is pretty much in line with the Equator.



I've set a save point here. For all of these tests I'm going to return to this save, and burn exactly 500 m/s worth of delta V in the requisite direction.

Radial Out



Radial out points us away from the mathematical focus of the orbit (in this case, the planet).



The end result of this burn is that the whole orbit pivots about the ship in a clockwise direction. I've heard it described sometimes as like "spinning a hula hoop around a pole"

Radial In



Radial in points us in toward the focus.



This time the whole orbit is pivoted counterclockwise.

Normal



You can see why I said that it's easy to think of Normal as "pointing up", because that's how it'll look 95% of the time. It's important to remember, though, that Normal is relative to the orbital plane and not to the body you're orbiting. I'll show that in the next post. As for now, here's the effects of this burn.



Looking at the side-on view, you can see that the whole orbital plane has been pivoted around the radial axis counterclockwise.

Anti - Normal



The anti Normal, naturally, points us in the opposite direction.



This pivots the whole orbital plane clockwise.

[Azza Bamboo]

INCLINED ORBITS



The same 500m/s ship has been put into a new starting position. Another counterclockwise orbit, only this orbit is inclined. I've brought out the maneuver node widget to show where the normal and anti normal now face (the bars leading out to the pink triangles).



Perhaps this shows why I define the normal as pointing in the direction that pivots your orbital plane clockwise about the radial axis, because "pointing up" doesn't make sense in space the moment you stop orbiting in the expected Eastbound equatorial orbit.



It keeps pivoting counterclockwise, and yes that does mean that the direction of Normal actually changes as you fire into Normal and change your inclination. You have to keep steering to keep pointing at it (or have a pilot who's Level 2+ do this automatically).

I won't picture anti normal here but it would steer your orbital plane clockwise, toward an equatorial orbit.

CLOCKWISE ORBITS ARE ACTUALLY JUST VERY INCLINED ORBITS



This might look like the starting point from the previous post, but we're actually going clockwise around this orbit as we look down on the North pole.



I've brought out the maneuver node widget to show how this is handled. Note that Normal is now pointing down.



We are now facing our normal, because that is the direction we'd need to face to pivot our orbital plane counterclockwise.

In other words, a clockwise orbit is orbit that has been flipped all the way over 180 degrees until the normal faces down. It's useful this way, because normal always pivots the plane counterclockwise. It does mean that if you're using your normal to get a sense of direction you need to be conscious of whether you're headed clockwise or counterclockwise around the body you're orbiting.

[Carbon dioxide]

Okay, I see.

Of course, to de-orbit you need to lower your speed so accelerate opposite to the orbital direction, not perpendicular to it.

Although I guess if you really wanted to you could crash into the planet with incredibly speed if you keep doing a radial maneuver (in either direction) until your orbit intersects with the planet? Intuitively it feels like it might take a while before you get there though, since the farther you pull the two foci of your ellipsoid apart, the more fuel it'll cost to pull them even farther apart, and only when they're far away from each other enough does the orbit come close enough to the focus in the planet to actually intersect with the planet itself?

This is purely based on a handful of mathematical intuition, I never really studied orbital mechanics so I might be way off here.

[Azza Bamboo]

You can intersect the planet with a radial burn, and the cost of doing so depends on the distance from the planet and the eccentricity of your orbit. The further away you are and the more eccentric the orbit, the cheaper it is. Also, at some point your trajectory will cross the focus of the ellipse, at which point the direction of radial in and radial out switch over because you've flipped the orbit to the opposite direction by pushing your trajectory through the other side of the planet.

If it doesn't make sense, you might be forgetting that these burns are perpendicular to the direction of travel of the ship, the radius out to the focus is really only to determine one of the axes of the vector, the other two are bound due to it necessarily being perpendicular to the direction of travel. This means that in certain places of a highly eccentric orbit, your radial in and out doesn't actually point the ship at the planet.

In today's update, I'll find myself on an unexpected collision course with the mun, and make a tiny radial out burn from a great distance away to not only avoid the mun, but fine tune the distance away from the mun that I can carry out an orbital insertion burn. Given today's date, it should be no surprise that I'm heading to the mun today.

[Azza Bamboo]

7: Rendezvous With Drama - Part 1



Our Commissioners want us to rendezvous two ships in orbit of Kerbin. We don't need to dock, just have them meet within 200m at a near standstill.

We launch two Pippin spacecraft for the task.



And now mission control has to make up some means of bringing them together.



These two ships are on a near identical orbit, meaning the time it takes for them to circle around the globe is nearly identical. That's not what you want when they are several hundreds of thousands of meters apart.



Valentina, who is ahead of Jebediah, burns prograde to raise her apoapsis. This increases the time it takes for her to come back around to the point she is at.



Come the next rotation, they are much closer together. So close that Valentina would be significantly far behind Jebediah on her current trajectory. She burns retrograde to bring her apoapsis down and decrease the time it takes for her to reach this point in the next orbit.



Because our tracking facilities lack the means to predict encounters, we're having to eyeball these orbits. As it turns out, I wasn't able to slow down enough to prevent Valentina from falling behind Jebediah, so I carry out a radial in burn to bring their intersection close together.



It took several correction burns and a bit of luck, but these rockets designed for minmus had plenty of fuel to adjust their courses in Kerbin's orbit.



Valentina sets off for Jeb's ship.



Jeb sets off for Valentina's.







With the switch complete, they both return safely to Kerbin.

Well done, crew. To be first to navigate space so precisely as to have two ships meet is an impressive feat, and a requirement for our next mission.

Our commissioners want us to explore the mun.

[Azza Bamboo]

Rendezvous With Drama - Part 2

Today is a good day for moon landings, the 20th of July, 51 years from the day Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on our Moon (While Michael Collins held the fort back in the Command Module - in the Moon's orbit).



The Bigfish, a rocket designed for our Mun mission. Aboard this vessel is pilot Valentina and engineer Bill Kerman.



Its lower stage is four solid rocket boosters, designed so the central booster depletes its fuel before the other four, reducing its thrust as it sheds weight from the burned fuel.



Its central stage has three well supplied Thud engines



The final stage is powered by a terrier engine, and is capable of reaching mun orbit and back.



Now in Kerbin's orbit, you can see the two onion modules which have been pushed together to form a larger single cabin.

At the end of this cabin is a smaller rocket with its own terrier engine. This is the lander which Valentina will enter via EVA and use to land on the mun.



Trans-Munar injection burn.



Transfer orbit to mun encounter.



A day later, we finally get to see our trajectory relative to the mun. This shows a trajectory that'd have us collide with the mun at high speed.



A small radial out burn brings our trajectory over the Mun's surface.



Then we burn at periapsis to enter Mun's orbit.



Concerns over fuel lead me to stop lowering our orbit at this point.



Near the highest point of the orbit, Valentina boards the lander.



Separation of the lander from the bigfish, and a piece of space junk that once joined them.



Valentina burns retrograde to lower her orbit to a mun Landing.



hours later, she begins to slow herself on approach to the mun's surface.



From a porthole she spies an unusual feature in the landscape.



A successful landing, propping up the lander on its rocket bell nozzle.



She flies to the place she saw moments ago.



The Mun Arch!



No better place to put our flag. Also, it is useful, as flags appear as markers in our tracking station. It would make it easy for us to return here if we wanted to.

Congratulations to comrade Valentina for being the first kerbal on the mun. Now that we have proven our technology, the real challenge begins. Now we must delve deeper into space.

Valentina boards her flight to the Bigfish.



Now the trouble begins.



Several failed attempts at replicating our success in orbit of kerbin later, I give up on flying blind.



Orbiting and planting a flag on the mun has seen our commissioners give us more than enough money to upgrade our radar facility.

Now we can finally predict our approaches.



This doesn't overcome our fuel tank size, however. Valentina leaves the lander to make the final approach using her space suit.





After boarding the spaceship, she burns to an exit trajectory that will skim Kerbin's atmosphere. No more steep entries now that we can predict our Kerbin orbit from the Mun.



Bill and Valentina land safely in their unusual double pod.



This is when we realised we left the mun rocks in the lander. We keep this quiet from our commissioners, as they never contracted us to get mun rocks.



Even after the purchase of new radar equipment, our treasury is overflowing!



And now for a bizarre part of this game. Although it is significantly easier to land on minmus and return than it is to land on the mun, minmus offers enough experience to get everyone to level 2, while Valentina here is still level 1.

Bill reached level 1 engineer. He now has a parachute, something pilots have before they even level up. He also becomes more effective at using engineering equipment, which is something we're unlikely to research under Nataliy.



The bigfish was built of 30 parts. The maximum our workers will assemble using their current tools.



This region's workers' council approves the construction of an improved facility, funded by the space program on the condition that its workers now expand their limit to 255 parts.

Kerbin has no more moons, and at this point it is important that we do not lose focus or momentum. We will be first to reach the other planets of our solar system.

Moho





Eve and its moon Gilly



Duna and Ike, the binary planets


Dres



The gas giant Jool, and its five moons.



And Eeloo: whether it is a planet or not, it is there.



Right now, between Duna and Eve, is our home world of Kerbin. Everything we have explored thus far is under the light blue circle between the red and purple orbits of our sun.

[Azza Bamboo]

Our commissioners want us to explore the mun.

I forgot to mention before, but with the vast amount of science we returned from Minmus, we were able to implement the leadership initiative through our admin building.



This is why you have those subtractions from the contract payout. The Milestone payouts are not contracts, they just happen as you reach the milestones. However, contracts from the "world firsts record keeping" organisation almost always lead you to completing some kind of milestone you haven't already completed.

[Azza Bamboo]

8: The Atmosphere On Kerbin



An Incompetent capitalist space program has stranded one of its own in orbit. We are to rescue this stranded person, to show our dominance and perhaps to improve relations.



This is the Pippin Twin. It is a Pippin spacecraft with a few modifications. First is the Bigfish style double pod.



Second is that the swivel engine is replaced with a pair of thud engines. This is so they can be activated before the solid fuel booster is depleted, so that we can steer this ship during the first stage.



Steering is important for the pippin twin, as its double pod causes a lot of drag. The rocket needs to fire straight upward into thinner parts of the atmosphere before we can turn toward our orbit, else the drag at the top end of the ship would catch the wind and cause us to flip.



Another modification to this ship is that the second stage has a smaller fuel tank. This is to reduce the overall mass of the ship to compensate for the additional mass of the second pod and allow the lower stage to actually lift this thing. Given that the base vehicle (Pippin) could originally go to minmus, land and return, this modification doesn't nearly remove enough fuel to cause us not to enter orbit.



The Pippin Twin first reaches the height of the stranded kerbal's orbit.



Then we fire prograde until we have an orbit with a predicted encounter.



Prior to this encounter we select "target" mode on the navigation ball. Now all of the nodes on the ball are calculated by our movement relative to the target instead of the planet. We fire so as to push our target retrograde into a direction facing away from the target (the pink symbol) this causes our relative speed to slow and has us move toward each other. This moves our intersect into a later position on the orbit, and has us projected to come within 100m of each other.



Janbrett boards the rescue vessel, and we get our first look at the Capitalists' strange space suits.



They enter the atmosphere



A safe landing.



Once Janbrett is recovered, she pleads with us.

I cannot go back there. They have armed guards walking openly in the streets, taking our people away, just for protesting our government. I am not even being paid, I am an intern engineer. Every time I build for them or go into space the company says to me "we will consider you for future engineering posts" but they never make any openings. They don't need to when they have interns doing the work. I can't stand for my authoritarian capitalist regime, and I have no opportunities there. Please, let me live in the LPB. I will work for you, and maybe here I won't have to live in a van in the parking lot of a local supermarket.

The council convenes, to discuss two motions.

Motion 1: The naturalisation of Janbrett Kerman.

That Janbrett Kerman shall be given asylum in LPB by means of full citizen status. She will be housed in block 15-A, and assigned to an engineering role, helping to build rockets for the space program. She will not be permitted to fly with the space program, or to independently work on mission critical hardware.

Amendment to motion 1:

omit "She will not be permitted to fly with the space program, or to independently work on mission critical hardware."

Motion 2: The development of a new space suit.

That we shall replace our space suit design with a design such as that which we have recovered from a newer capitalist enterprise.

Amendment to motion 2:

omit "that we" onwards and replace with "that we shall develop a superior futuristic space suit design to exceed that of the suit we have recovered from a newer capitalist enterprise".

VOTE NOW ON AMENDMENT TO MOTION 1 AND AMENDMENT TO MOTION 2

You may change your vote before the deadline, and feel free to offer your arguments. Voting ends 10:00AM British Summer Time Saturday (25th)

[Carbon dioxide]

Hmm.

I am not convinced it's a good idea to have someone from the other side of the Wall could be trusted in a position of piloting spacecraft. What if she turns out to be an enemy spy?
On the other hand we always could use more good pilots.

I feel an investigation into her background should be done before we can make a good decision on this amendment.

For now I wish to abstain from voting on Amendment 1.

For Amendment 2, well no discussion necessary. Of course we can do better than Them. Vote in favour.

[Azza Bamboo]

It's hard to get information in these times. She's got a passport and there's news articles that talk about her spaceflight. The articles praise her as being someone who worked her way from the bottom to the top, going from welding at an airframe factory to being an engineer flying on experimental space flights.

Thing is, if she is an agent, these are things the government could easily print.

There is one slight read on her. She briefly mentioned on the flight home that she's a long standing union member and activist. Our allies in the Socialist Workers Party on the other side of the wall were able to confirm that, when she was a welder for Bronsair 10 years ago, she did join her union and she protested for better working standards at a time when it was illegal to assemble. They were even able to dig into records and find her signature on an SWP lead petition to make it law that welders be issued eye protection at work.

However, even the SWP can be infiltrated.

[Azza Bamboo]

9: Patience



Attempts at launching a larger space vehicle capable of reaching other planets of the solar system exposed a fault in our technology: large structures lack the rigidity needed to hold straight under thrust.



While no one was hurt in this incident, the cost of the new vehicle cut deep into our funds.



It seems we have no choice but to improve our technology, much to the distaste of Nataliy.



Here are three of the four technologies we've developed from this new research:

Flags
On the left is a fuel tank, which is isn't new technology, but we now have the ability to print icons on our ships.

Crew Cabin
In the center is a crew cabin. It's a section built similarly to the cabin of an ordinary jet plane, capable of holding 2 kerbals.

Struts
On the right is two box struts, which aren't new technology. Between them, though, is a bar strut. These are new. They can be placed between structures to add stability to them.

The final technology is a launch clamp, which can be better seen at the bottom of the next image.



This is the Littlefish. It's designed to take two crew members to Duna on a mission lasting over a year. You can see the new clamp at the bottom of the ship, holding it over the ground.



Pilot Jebediah and Engineer Bill take off from the KSC.



Although the littlefish fires rockets from its second stage during the first stage of the launch, the fuel supplying these is drawn entirely from the lower stage until separation.



Separation of the lower stage, as the second stage continues to thrust. The lower section, when fully fuelled, weighs just shy of the weight of two whole Pippin rockets (45 tons to a pair of Pippins' 46).



Separation of the second stage, which weighed 38 tons. This means that, when fully fueled, both the lower stage and the second stage combined weigh about the same as a Pippin and a Bigfish strapped together.



This next stage was 25 tons, more than another Pippin thrown away. There's another way you could look at this, though. The entire ship weighs 139 tons on the launchpad. If you discount the ship that crashed in the ocean, and the Pippin variant we sent on a side mission to rescue Janbrett, the littlefish only comes 7 tons short of weighing the sum total of every other ship we've launched this campaign.



The final two stages of this ship use the same fuel pumping technique seen earlier. Although the engine in the center stage of this has already fired, it drinks fuel from the tanks it'll eject first.



I'm glad we researched the crew cabin piece, because it would have been cruel to make two crew members travel for over a year in just a bigfish style double pod.



Now they crew the ship until a transfer window opens, at which point we'll swap the crew out for a fresh crew before sending this on its way to Duna. We launched this ship early to make sure we had all the issues worked out well in advance of the planets getting into position for a good launch window. We're not going to time warp straight to the time of our burn, however, because there's something else to sort out first.



We only have 20k bucks.



To put 20k into perspective, the ships we've launched this campaign vary in cost from 7k to 53k

We need to first get about 150k for a better mission control room (one that's capable of advanced flight planning.) Then we'd ideally have a million before reaching Duna to unlock surface samples by upgrading the research facility. That way instead of needing to find rocks to bring back, we can just sample the ground wherever we land.

[Azza Bamboo]

Patience - Part 2

We are set to conquer Duna at a time where the rest of the world is struggling to reach our moons. If the capitalists want to steal our secret, there is no secret! Our nation works as one for a common cause: the furthering of kerbalkind through its shared labour. The sooner your nations work for their people, and not for their capital class, the sooner you may begin to catch up with us in space and on Kerbin. This is not a message of hostility, but of hope. Hope that one day all kerbinkind will not just reach for the stars, but one day touch the stars they have reached for: Together we can achieve, and not just aspire.

Our Commissioners want us to carry on exploring the mun.



Their first aim is easy, but the second is something else. Return (a vessel) from the surface of the Mun is not something we have done. Our last ship left the lander in the Mun's orbit, but this time they want the lander back on terra firma.



We are given some funds to start this project. As ever, the rest of our funding is contingent on performance.



This is the Bigfish 2. It is effectively a Bigfish with a few modifications. Most notable is the fact the solid rocket boosters have been replaced with liquid fuel rockets.



There's a few science experiments strapped to the re entry pods.


Finally, there's a parachute on the lander.


pilot Valentina and scientist Bob set off on this mission.



The new lower stage has vastly increased the reach of this platform. The second stage decouples just before achieving orbit, and the vehicle's overall delta v is improved by about 200m/s



But the cost has increased, and launching this vessel has seen our funding reach "do or die" levels again. That said, we do have two vehicles in space right now. Our pending Duna mission could be seen as an insurance policy here.



We want to get the moon rocks that Valentina carelessly left in the Mun lander. The lander orbits the Mun clockwise.



This means our approach vector here is on the wrong side of the mun for a clockwise orbit.



A prograde burn causes us to meet the Mun sooner on our trajectory, moving the approach ahead of the Mun instead of behind it. Think of it like two cars approaching a cross junction from either road: if you're slower you'll pass the junction behind the other car. If you haul ass, you'll cross the junction in front of it (and if you're just the wrong speed, you'll smash right into each other).



We capture ourselves in orbit of the mun, targeting the lander (green orbital path).

The dotted line leading to the markers labelled AN and DN is the line where the planes of our two orbits intersect.



An Anti Normal burn at our Ascending Node pivots our orbit about that line, bringing them into alignment. Note that this uses less fuel the further away you are from the body you are orbiting, which is why we kept this orbit quite eccentric.



First we enter a low orbit.



This just makes it less expensive for the new lander to reach the Mun. The lander's margins are much tighter than the ship's.



scientist Bob then sets up an approach with the old lander. His piloting is not so good, but it works.



Experienced Mun lander Valentina Kerman sets up her landing approach.



The rocket landed on a slope. It wasn't worth trying to land it on its rocket bell this time, as the stability from the reaction wheels cuts out when Valentina leaves the ship. Instead this picture shows us allowing the ship to roll until it naturally comes to rest.



At that point we check where our ship is along its trajectory toward the old lander. The most limited resource in this game is the players attention. I can't fly two ships at once, so I need to make sure I'm not going to miss the moment these two ships meet.



We have enough time to explore, if we hurry.



Valentina plants her flag at the top of an interesting plateau in the middle of a crater.



She also smashes this rock.



As she heads back to the ship, we check the progress on the other ship.



It'll be fine.



It's at this moment that Valentina ran out of propellent in her suit.



oof



She's able to get back into the ship by rolling the ship over until the door is accessible from the ground.



With 5 minutes to spare, we leave Val safely on the surface of the Mun while we head over to Bob.



They rendezvous, achieving one of our commissioners aims.



Bob heads out to grab the Mun rocks from the old lander.



Yoink.



After Bob heads back to his ship, Valentina sets off again.



The lander runs out of fuel before it can meet Kerbin's atmosphere.



Valentina refuels her suit and propels the lander by thrusting into its rear.



This brings her trajectory much lower.



Bob then sets off on his way home.



The Mk1 capsule has no ablator. This means we have to take it gently on these entries into the atmosphere.



Although it hit the atmosphere, it pulls up again, having not slowed down enough to capture it from orbit. This ascent can be seen in the vertical speed indicator, here showing 100m/s upward.



So we go around again



And pull out of the atmosphere again



On the third dip into Kerbin's atmosphere I try a more aggressive angle.



We pull out again, glowing red in the heat.



And again, our fourth dip into the atmosphere.



Valentina then pushes the ship retrograde at its highest point in the orbit, lowering the low point, hastening this process.



The roar of the rushing air as it turns to plasma on the engine bell is louder than before.



That's when we run out of battery power in the command module. Its reaction wheels stop stabilising the vessel, and it tumbles chaotically in the atmosphere.



We leave the atmopshere for the fifth and last time.



Realising this is the final approach, Valentina pushes the ship prograde at the highest point in the orbit, raising its low point from a steep 14km to a safer 28km.



Once again we tumble.



With the apoapsis (highest point) of the orbit below 70km (the edge of the atmosphere) we are committed to landing.


Calamity strikes low in Kerbin's atmosphere. Instead of tumbling and losing speed, the ship points ahead in stable flight like a bullet. The braking effect of the atmosphere is severely reduced in this aerodynamic position, and we're hurtling at over 800m/s (1789 mph)



only 4000m from the ground, we finally reach the maximum speed our chute can safely deploy at.



The unions and the councils agree: this design is not safe, and Valentina is lucky to return with her life.





The commissioners reward us for our efforts, and we store some science. There are things we can do with this data other than research, like start an open source science policy that just has us burn all our science for good reputation.



Bob comes home. The pods cause drag, meaning this ship tends to point its nose away from the direction of travel. It's useful to shield the experiments from the heat of re entry.



A safe landing.



Because Val's new mun rocks arrived first, there's no science to be had in the old rocks Bob pulled from the old lander.


Our old mission control building could only allow for two simultaneous contracts, and did not allow us to plan maneuvers.


The new facilities allow for flight planning and up to 7 simultaneous contracts.



With this we plan the Littlefish's burn to Duna.

[Wakkerdis]

If voting is still open, I say
Nay on Amendment to Motion 1. Keep her from becoming a political football.

Yea on Amendment to Motion 2 if the cost is not prohibitive. We are not here to match the capitalists, we are here to beat them!

[Azza Bamboo]

Voting is still open, and ends 10:00AM BST on Saturday 25th

[Azza Bamboo]

10: At our Heels

With several weeks to go until the Duna transfer window opens, there's still work to do before we can send the Littlefish on its way. In this time, our commissioners come in with a slew of demands.



Orbiting Minmus and hopping out of the capsule should be simple.



Land on the mun with some science experiments? Simple enough.



These missions require us to fly over a certain point on the mun and make some observations. It's doable. Note that as our reputation score rises we're more likely to get difficult and high paying contracts.



Our engineers want us to test how a component they have will perform in space. These missions temporarily give us use of a component, whether we've researched it or not, and require us to use it under specific circumstances to complete the test. I could cheat and use this temporary access to the new component to simply give us use of unresearched technology, but I think that's against the spirit of these missions.



A capitalist enterprise has stranded one of its own near the mun. Once again we're in a position to show our strength. The fact they have reached this far, though, shows they are closing the gap.



Taking all of these contracts gives us some good starting funds.



This is the bigfish 3. At 30,000 bucks it costs almost double that of the original bigfish. Its science units are strapped to the lander instead of the entry pods. Also It has extended tanks in the lower stage, meaning much less of its upper stage will have been used by the time it reaches orbit. This extended range will be useful for taking observations as per our survey contract.



Valentina sets off alone. The empty seat in this double pod is for our rescue mission.



We are practically in orbit by the time we decouple the middle stage, offering a vast amount of fuel for this mission.



We now have the ability to plan our mun approaches well in advance.



It's just a case of completing the burn as planned.



Days later, at our closest point to the Mun, we capture ourselves in an orbit that allows us to meet up with Mauemy, the stranded kerbal.



Mauemy hops over to the Bigfish 3



Valentina takes the tape out of the flight computer, rendering the bigfish 3 inoperable, before decoupling the lander and setting a course for the surface.



The pod lands on the slope of a large crater, and slides nose first



Eventually the pod slides sideways, and the mystery goo unit holds it still, acting like a choc.



Another successful landing for comrade Valentina.



We then wait until the Bigfish is sailing overhead.



We create a suborbital trajectory that encounters the bigfish near its peak.



The trajectory has us sailing through a narrow valley, offering scenic views to Val.



Val remembers to grab the science data from the lander this time.



With Val back in the Bigfish 3, it's time to grab those observations.



An Anti Normal Burn inclines our orbit. We're supposed to head directly over the locations indicated by the grey markers with the blue icons in them. While our trajectory misses them at the moment, they will eventually meet.



As the Mun rotates on its axis, the orientation of our orbit stays the same, as though pinned on rails following the Mun. This means the surface locations will eventually pivot themselves into our orbital path.



Like so.



As we pass over the zone, the game shows us we're in the right place.



In the next orbit, we align with the next location.



A few orbits later we make a slight adjustment to grab this more southerly location, but our fuel becomes tight and we can't get any more inclined than this. This means we can't grab the fourth location.



Our orbit isn't inclined enough to reach that far South, so as the Mun turns this location circles about the South pole and never intersects our orbit.



We head home with that mission unsatisfied. We need to do another Mun mission anyway, as this flight didn't have the test component our commissioners want us to fire in the Mun's orbit. We can pick this last observation up then.



It was definitely the right decision not to try getting that last location. We coast home with practically no fuel left.





The mission yields great data and money. Mauemy, the rescued kerbal, requests to go home. Deportation is our usual policy, and we send her on her way. Janbrett, our first rescued Kerbal, stays at our welcoming hostel for new arrivals. Our returning Mauemy has the other side of the world questioning Janbrett's fate. We are silent, as any information could risk harm to her should she need to be deported after the council's future decision.


In the few days Val was gone, our commissioners had a new request. Another capitalist organisation fails the safety of its workers. A man is stranded. The fact they have landed on Minmus shows they are hot on our heels.

At this point there are two flights we need to complete: one mission to the Mun to grab that last observation and test the new component. One mission to minmus to complete a spacewalk and rescue the stranded worker.



Valentina flies a Pippin Twin rocket to orbit of Kerbin.



This meets up with the Littlefish - the ship that will carry us to Duna when the transfer window opens.



Pilot Jebediah leaves the Littlefish, which he and engineer Bill have been looking after since its launch.



Jebediah and Val head home, ready to launch these two missions.

[Azza Bamboo]

11: On Fumes

This time, Valentina heads out to Minmus and Jebediah heads to the Mun. They both get to see one another's stomping grounds.



Valentina sets out to Minmus on the Pippin Twin XL: A Pippin twin with a few modifications.



A new lower stage with three solid fuel boosters.



New liquid fuel boosters have been strapped to the side of the large solid fuel booster. This solid fuel booster is the lowest stage on the original Pippin and Pippin Twin.



The next stage has a swivel engine, like the original Pippin. The Pippin twin used twin thud engines here.



The final modification is that the upper stage has our flag printed onto its fuel tanks.



The Pippin twin burns out toward Minmus.



They will arrive in 4 days, after carrying out a maneuver in 2 days time to correct this course.



Jeb sets off in a Bigfish 2, only this model has the test component bolted to its side.



In the middle of his transfer to the Mun, Jeb uses radial and Normal burns to adjust his mun approach.



Now he's headed over the top of the Mun, allowing for him to get into a polar orbit. This time the objective won't be too far South.



Jeb creates a polar orbit, but leaves his apoapsis high enough to meet the altitude requirement of the component test (380km)



Shortly after, Val completes her burn to encounter Minmus.



3 Days.



Jeb then completes the test of the decoupler component, littering space for engineering data.



Concerned about the fuel on his rocket, Jeb climbs into the lander.



He uses the lander to get into a lower orbit for the observation mission.



Then... wait?! This wasn't in the mission brief, Jeb.



Landing in a crater means more time spent waiting for the rocket to come to rest.



Jeb plants his flag overlooking a canyon on the Mun.



He takes in the beauty of the scenery as he flies back to the lander.



He sights a Kerbin Rise as he climbs in altitude back toward his ship.



Then finally, Jeb returns to the Bigfish.



The Bigfish's remaining fuel is nowhere near enough to get back to Kerbin's atmosphere.



But using our advanced flight planning, we're able to do something interesting with 101 m/s



Jeb burns to make a series of Mun encounters that will create a highly elliptical orbit... ...over 44 days. On this path, It could easily be over 80 days before he returns to Kerbin. It's the best we were able to plan. Ideally we'd have found a series of encounters for a lower orbit, but this high ellipse means we can lower our orbit for a tiny amount of fuel.



As Jeb begins his long gravity tour, Valentina finds her way into Low Minmus orbit.



She has her own fuel problems, however. This fuel would only be enough for one landing on minmus, let alone getting back into orbit or back to Kerbin.



Instead we do something sneaky. When you rescue a Kerbal, you can't pilot them until you have come close enough to them for them to have physically spawned in the game. This happens within about 2.2km.



So Val isn't going to land, she's just going to fly dangerously close to the ground to get close enough for Aldnard to spawn.



Then she'll get herself back into orbit with only slightly less fuel than she needs to get home. That's fine, we can push the ship with our space suits.



Now that we can control Aldnard, we can get him into Minmus orbit.



That's right, Minmus is so light and small that you can get into its orbit with your space suit.



And with more than enough left over to carry out a rendezvous.



Aldnard climbs aboard.



A few burns and adjustments later...



They arrive safely at Kerbin.



Aldnard goes home, and Valentina finally gets her second star.

I still find it ridiculous that Minmus landings are worth two stars while the Mun only gets you your first. It is harder to land on the Mun and return than it is to land on Minmus.



Completing all of these objectives has pleased our commissioners greatly.



We train a new kerbonaut: Tim. He is supremely courageous and smart. With Val about to head on a long mission to Duna, and with Jeb taking the long way home, it's not long before he will see space.



Training personnel is not cheap, however.

You have angered me, Jebediah. I would suspend you, but you seem to have done that yourself.

[Azza Bamboo]

12: A Big Pond

Today Valentina and Robert Kerman set sail on a journey that will last over a year. This is a journey to a world yet unvisited: Duna. We set sail to the shores of new world to offer hope to kerbalkind and all of our workers. Space, like Kerbin, has no will of its own. Whether it will be exploited for the few, or whether it will benefit us all, depends on us. Only if the LPB occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new world will be a place of equality, or whether it will become another place where wealth is torn from the workers hands.

There is no class, no exploitation, no capitalism on these new worlds as yet. The dangers of these worlds are equally dangerous to any kerbal. The exploration of the new worlds deserves the best of kerbalkind, and this opportunity may never come again.

To Valentina and Robert: All the workers of the world are with you.

Val and Bob take a Pippin Twin to orbit.


They rendezvous with the Littlefish


Bill leaves the Littlefish, and heads to the Pippin Twin. He has been the caretaker of this vessel in orbit for over 30 days, and now gets to go home.

[Carbon dioxide]

One of the weirdest things about the Apollo moon missions is the concept of "Rope memory".

https://youtu.be/P12r8DKHsak Give this a watch just to see how unusual it was.


Going back to KSP, I guess (right now) there's no possibility to reattach a lander to an orbiter and fly back together?

[Azza Bamboo]

You can reattach things, you can even build modular space stations. I'm just not on course to showcase the full extent of what's possible in this game, given that the challenge stipulation of Nataliy's run is that I don't research new parts unless I have to.

There's docking ring parts later in the tech tree that allow you to push things together in space. In the past I've used them to build space stations, run Apollo style missions, and even for space refueling stations that sit in orbit of a moon, taking deliveries from ISRU bases on that particular moon and using it to refuel ferries that go between planets.

[Azza Bamboo]

One of the weirdest things about the Apollo moon missions is the concept of "Rope memory".

One of the greatest moments of the Apollo moon missions was on their "dress rehearsal" of a moon landing, Apollo 10. It reached the moon's orbit and descended its lander toward the moon before bringing it back to the command module, just as a test of the systems. Now that the logs of its radio conversations are public, we get this little nugget